For monochiral DWNTs that exhibit axially aligned facets even the slightest interwall rotation induces significant circumferential facet revolution, and minor interwall telescoping can lead to complete unfaceting. Similar manipulations applied to bichiral DWNTs result in global screw-like motion of their elongated helical facets reminiscent of an Archimedean screw.

This, in turn, suggests that the relative abundance of faceting in multiwalled boron-nitride nanotubes plays a central role not only in their enhanced torsional stiffness but also in the significantly higher interwall friction that they exhibit with respect to MWCNTs.

Despite their remarkable structural similarity, faceting is more commonly observed in multiwalled boron-nitride nanotubes
(MWBNNTs) than in their carbon counterparts (MWCNTs). According to the authors, this can be attributed to three important
factors:

The screw-like motion of the faceted helical pattern, which establishes the smallest realization of an Archimedean screw, has the potential to achieve directional transport of weakly adsorbed molecules along the surface of the tube.

"Several other, more speculative but highly intriguing, consequences of the striking facet evolutions discussed in our paper can be envisioned," write the scientists. "First, we have shown that facet dynamics strongly depend on the relative chirality of adjacent nanotube walls. Therefore, the interwall pulling force trace should encode information about the identity of the various tube shells."

This, in turn, opens new opportunities for novel material characterization techniques that may provide access to the specific sequence of chiralities of successive nanotube walls. Furthermore, electronic effects, not discussed in this work, may also exhibit unexpected behavior.

Specifically, surface states that typically localize at sharp edges, such as the circumferential vertices of the polygonal cross-section, may also be pumped along the surface of nanotubes in an Archimedean manner.